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The CIA covertly funded the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a network that promoted anti-Communist intellectual life during the Cold War. Separately, the Museum of Modern Art organized major exhibitions of American art abroad in coordination with U.S. Information Agency officials and embassies. Those histories overlap in the broader story of cultural diplomacy, but the records cited here do not establish that the CIA paid Abstract Expressionist artists, directed MoMA’s exhibition program, or spent a verified sum of “secret millions” on modern art.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteWhat the CIA demonstrably funded
The strongest documented case is organizational, not artist-by-artist: the CIA covertly supported the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), an international organization launched after a June 1950 conference in Berlin. In its historical account, CIA historian Michael S. Warner describes covert support as a way to promote the non-Communist left when openly sponsoring anti-Communist intellectuals was politically difficult.
The CCF published Encounter and organized conferences. These activities made it a cultural and intellectual network, but evidence that the CIA supported the organization does not automatically show that it paid for every publication, event, artwork or exhibition associated with Cold War cultural activity.
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How the CCF emerged
From the 1949 peace conference to a counter-campaign
Warner’s CIA history frames the effort as a response to a large, Soviet-sponsored peace conference held at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria in March 1949. It describes philosopher Sidney Hook and other intellectuals organizing an anti-Communist response. Warner attributes to Hook a striking proposal: “Give me a hundred million dollars and a thousand dedicated people, and I will guarantee to generate such a wave of democratic unrest among the masses–yes, even among the soldiers–of Stalin’s own empire, that all his problems for a long period of time to come will be internal. I can find the people.”
That figure was Hook’s proposed sum, not evidence of an appropriation or of money spent on art. It should not be used as a budget for the CCF, modern art or the CIA’s cultural activity.
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The CCF’s founding gathering opened on 26 June 1950 at Berlin’s Titania Palace, one day after North Korea invaded South Korea. Warner reports almost 200 delegates and 4,000 other attendees. His account presents the meeting as helping launch the CCF and consolidate a strategy of supporting the non-Communist left.
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What MoMA’s exhibition records show—and do not show
The Museum of Modern Art’s Archives finding aid documents a substantial postwar program for circulating American art internationally. Its records cover more than 300 exhibitions and describe coordination between program staff, U.S. Information Agency officials and U.S. embassies. For the 1955 Paris presentation of Modern Art in the U.S.A., the finding aid lists more than 500 objects drawn from MoMA’s curatorial departments.
That is strong evidence of organized cultural diplomacy and exhibition circulation. It is not, on its own, evidence that the CIA financed those exhibitions, selected the artists, controlled the museum’s program or paid individual artists. The distinction matters: a museum exhibition coordinated with public officials is not the same thing as covert CIA sponsorship, even when both sit within the Cold War’s wider competition over ideas and national image.
Three claims that should not be conflated
| Claim | What the cited records support | What they do not establish |
|---|---|---|
| Covert CIA support for the CCF | The CIA’s institutional history describes covert funding and the Agency’s aim of promoting the non-Communist left. | That every CCF publication or cultural activity was directly controlled by the CIA. |
| American art shown abroad | MoMA’s archival finding aid records international exhibitions and coordination with USIA officials and embassies. | That the CIA paid artists or directed MoMA’s exhibition choices. |
| “Secret millions” spent on modern art | The available records establish no art-specific total. | A verified CIA expenditure amount for Abstract Expressionism, modern art or direct artist payments. |
How much control did the CIA exert?
Covert support and editorial control are different questions. In a CIA-hosted review of Frances Stonor Saunders’s The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, reviewer Thomas M. Troy Jr. accepts the central history of covert support but disputes how fully the evidence demonstrates agency control. Troy characterizes Saunders’s evidence as identifying only two cases in roughly 2,000 Encounter articles and reviews where the CIA may have intervened to prevent publication. That is the reviewer’s description of the book’s evidence, not an independently audited count.
Troy also cautions that the effectiveness of propaganda is difficult to measure objectively and criticizes the book for not analyzing outcomes. The records described here therefore support claims about funding structures and cultural activity more clearly than claims about how much the effort changed public opinion or political behavior.
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Exposure and the problem of separating culture from propaganda
The CIA’s historical account dates the Agency’s arranged separation from the CCF to 1966 and notes that CIA sponsorship became public in 1967. The exposure raised a practical and ethical problem for cultural exchange: when audiences learn that a supposedly independent cultural body received covert backing, trust in the body’s work—and in other publicly supported exchange—can be damaged.
A 1967 State Department document records officials’ concern about distinguishing legitimate exchange from propaganda. Joseph Smiley, chairman of the U.S. Advisory Commission on International Education and Cultural Affairs, wrote that “The fundamental purpose of such an arrangement would be to make the clearest possible distinction between cultural and educational efforts as such and information or propaganda functions.” The document’s reference to “CIA orphans” reflects the institutional fallout as officials considered how to disentangle cultural and educational programs from covert activity.
What the title’s “secret millions” can responsibly mean
The documented story is consequential without assigning an unsupported price tag to modern art. The CIA covertly backed the CCF; MoMA’s records document a major international exhibition program coordinated in part with U.S. government officials; and the CIA’s role in cultural activity became a public controversy. But the available sources do not verify a total spent specifically on modern art or direct CIA payments to Abstract Expressionist artists. Those claims require evidence identifying the amount, recipient, purpose and period—not Hook’s proposed $100 million or a general figure for a broader cultural campaign.
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